Professor Zhang Zhongxiang from Tianjin University delivers a themed lecture at the CCS

2024/05/09

On May 7, 2024, CCS Distinguished Senior Fellow Zhang Zhongxiang, Professor and founding dean of the Ma Yinchu School of Economics, Tianjin University, delivered a lecture titled “China’s Carbon Market: Development, Evaluation and Ways Forward” at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. This has been the third lecture of the Distinguished Speaker Series launched by the CCS since its establishment in March 2024.

Professor Maksud Kamal, president of the University of Dhaka, attended the lecture and made a summary of it. The meeting was chaired by professor Shamsad Mortuza, director of International Affairs Office of the University of Dhaka and the Bangladesh director of the CCS. Also present were Yang Hui, Chinese director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Dhaka as well as over 100 faculty members and students. Liu Zongyi, Chinese director of the CCS, together with some experts and scholars from the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies attended the meeting online. The lecture received enthusiastic responses, with active questioning and interactive exchanges among the attendees.

Professor Zhang systematically introduced China's international commitments in carbon emissions to address global climate change and their impact on global emission reduction. He believes that China alone, by launching and implementing the dual carbon goals, will slow global temperature rise by 0.16-0.30°C and make remarkable contributions to international carbon reduction. He also compared China's emission reduction efforts with those of the European Union and the United States, stating that China, with reduction speed and scale surpassing those of any other country in the world, will transit from carbon peaking to carbon neutrality in only 30 years while the EU and the US will spend approximately 45-60 years. As for the future reforms of China's pilot carbon trading market, Zhang believes that the national carbon market is in the initial stage of establishment, coexisting with local pilot markets. According to him, local carbon markets can collaborate with the national market to generate synergy effects in various aspects; they can continue with efforts to explore and improve more mechanisms, while incorporating more industries and emission entities; local carbon markets can get a head start over the national carbon market in transition to aggregate-based carbon markets; and explorative efforts will be made to establish connectivity between the national local carbon markets, allowing carbon quota trading between them. He emphasized that a scientific long-term quota allocation mechanism should be put in place to achieve the healthy and orderly development of China's carbon market as it provides enterprises to reduce emissions with clear expectations for quota tightening and renewal time nodes, thus facilitating scientific and comprehensive decision-making to ensure the long-term stable operation of the carbon market.

The CCS at the University of Dhaka is an academic research institution jointly established by a group of leading Chinese research institution and universities headed by the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, including the Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies, Tongji University, East China Normal University and Yunnan University, in collaboration with the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh and Bangladeshi partners, namely Shahjalal University of Science and Technology and Ahsanullah University of Science and Technology. It is committed to building a high-level, high-standard, and open platform for cultural and academic exchanges to promote friendly communication between China and Bangladesh and China and South Asian countries.